Just to be 100% clear, no one should assume that I'm accusing them of being one way or another. If I was, I would just say that. What I am trying to do, per my earlier statement, is to make certain that people remain mindful of exactly how they express themselves and how that may be taken.

I am currently chafed, but not anywhere near pissed, and I don't want to get there.

If your oblique reference should happen to be me, I'm fine with letting it drop - mostly it was just the "offensive language does not become inoffensive in context" thing that caught my attention, and while I stand by my position on that, it was probably unwise of me to bring it up.

We did. And I'm inclined to agree it's not a place we should linger. I've given it some thought and I think I was making a false equivalency between a pejoratively misused descriptor and a purpose-built slur.

Right, in the context of the us/not-us dichotomy, if it came down to all humanity having the same hue, eye/hair color, and religion, wars would be started over "HEY THAT GUY IS TALLER THAN I AM!" because that's how we roll.

Actually, never mind that other stuff, I just had one interesting observation on us/not-us - one place where they really do completely break the race/creed/ethnicity identification is the military. It seems like after you get done with boot, all you see is "Marine" and "not-Marine" (or "Army" and "not-Army", or whatever branch).

I recall a friend of mine describing inter-service rivalry as thus: if Marines and Navy are in the same bar, they will fight each other; if Army walks in, Marines and Navy will team up to fight Army; if Air Force shows up, everyone will gang up on Air Force.

one place where they really do completely break the race/creed/ethnicity identification is the military. It seems like after you get done with boot, all you see is "Marine" and "not-Marine" (or "Army" and "not-Army", or whatever branch).

Actually, never mind that other stuff, I just had one interesting observation on us/not-us - one place where they really do completely break the race/creed/ethnicity identification is the military. It seems like after you get done with boot, all you see is "Marine" and "not-Marine" (or "Army" and "not-Army", or whatever branch).

I recall a friend of mine describing inter-service rivalry as thus: if Marines and Navy are in the same bar, they will fight each other; if Army walks in, Marines and Navy will team up to fight Army; if Air Force shows up, everyone will gang up on Air Force.

I don't watch the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but I'm aware of the story breaking around it. So parody / satire is "bullying" now?

Honestly I keep re-reading the articles about it because that quote sticks in my fucking craw something fierce.

Looking at older pics of the guy he was clearly handsome as fuck with a nice Julian Sands thing going on before he clearly decided to fuck his face up with too much cutting, injecting and pulling.

He absolutely deserved to be made fun of because of the way he looked. He looked damn good and fucked with that out of vanity. I hate he killed himself because depression sucks but whyever he did so, he definitely made his bed with regards to ridicule of his appearance.

Honestly I keep re-reading the articles about it because that quote sticks in my fucking craw something fierce.

Looking at older pics of the guy he was clearly handsome as fuck with a nice Julian Sands thing going on before he clearly decided to fuck his face up with too much cutting, injecting and pulling.

He absolutely deserved to be made fun of because of the way he looked. He looked damn good and fucked with that out of vanity. I hate he killed himself because depression sucks but whyever he did so, he definitely made his bed with regards to ridicule of his appearance.

I don't watch the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but I'm aware of the story breaking around it. So parody / satire is "bullying" now?

I don't know that it's bullying per se but they did publicly mock the looks of someone who very clearly had low self esteem and body dysmorphia. I don't think it's wrong to say that hey, maybe they didn't think it the whole way through. They could just as easily have made the character a hilariously freakish result of plastic surgery without making him a carbon copy of Brandt.

I don't know that it's bullying per se but they did publicly mock the looks of someone who very clearly had low self esteem and body dysmorphia. I don't think it's wrong to say that hey, maybe they didn't think it the whole way through. They could just as easily have made the character a hilariously freakish result of plastic surgery without making him a carbon copy of Brandt.

There goes every SNL impression of Donatella Versace and Michael Jackson.

There goes every SNL impression of Donatella Versace and Michael Jackson.

See what I mean?

So what? Obviously there's no one answer, but if a person is likely to be vulnerable and is being made fun of not for being an asshole but for being "freakish" then how about you don't do it in a public forum just because you can. And I know that encompasses a whole lot more than just SNL but I can't think of a single one of those things that we'd be poorer without.

It's kinda like a thought that came to mind during this year's Oscars when the non-celebrity winners 'broke the code' in how to not get played off by the orchestra: mentioning personal demons, tragedies, and social justice issues!

It was great to see happen naturally this year, but imagine how insufferable it would be to see it get normalized in some way. It probably won't since it's now a THING that happened.

As for Kimmy Schmidt, the thing here is that the parody of the surgeon was NEVER an issue to anyone (as far as I know) until this happened. Nobody came out and suggested that we take it easy on mocking public figures based on the show itself (it was just about the representation of Native Americans).

So any criticism of the show now can't help but come off super-reactionary.

But I'm also someone who takes some issue with the leeway given to the dramatization of real people... particularly those who are still alive. It's a powerful and necessary tool that gets wielded a bit too carelessly and can do harm to real people. And this isn't TOO far from the current topic.

So what? Obviously there's no one answer, but if a person is likely to be vulnerable and is being made fun of not for being an asshole but for being "freakish" then how about you don't do it in a public forum just because you can. And I know that encompasses a whole lot more than just SNL but I can't think of a single one of those things that we'd be poorer without.

But since when did you have to be an asshole to become the subject of parody? I assume no one on Kimmy Schmidt's staff had access to his medical files, but that's beside the point. He made his living off of rich people terrified of growing older and consumed with maintaining a "youthful" appearance. There's plenty out there suggesting that that is not a healthy thing. Does that mean it's perfectly cool that this may have been something that triggered a pre-existing condition? No, of course not, but it doesn't mean that the staff of Kimmy Schmidt had any responsibility other than to try and be funny about what he did for a living and his being a sort of corporeal avatar for the industry.

Had this man complained in the press instead of killing himself, we very likely wouldn't be having this conversation. That he did kill himself, as unfortunate as that is, doesn't really change that.

There's a tabloid attitude of "Open Season" on celebrities that decent people abhor. That is, until they REALLY mess up publicly (Lindsay Lohan, etc). In a society so obsessed with appearances and labels, it's no surprise that TMZ and other media outlets would focus on someone like Bruce Jenner and his personal transformation. I find the fascination weirder than the behavior sometimes. But reality tv (more than most genres) and satire are built on foundations of Schaenenfreude.

Does Brandt have more of a bullseye on his back because of job or because of his personal usage? Or both?

Gender identification is much more complex than the refusal to age, but would it be less "allowable" if they had parodied Jenner instead of Brandt?

A) Is the target a jerk?
B) Do I identify with the target?
C) Are they, or have they ever been oppressed or an underdog?
D) Will they see it as an act of War?
E) What is the satirist's intent and context?
F) Is the satire funny or insightful? Who decides?Edited by DARKMITE8 - 4/7/15 at 2:13pm

The target might not be a jerk but he's hardly a facial reconstruction specialist at your local children's hospital. He used the same skill set to become one of the richest and most powerful people on the planet. I'm sure he had his private pain just like the rest of us, but maybe he should have been able to take the slings and arrows lobbed at him by a comedy show.

Man am I glad I don't work in comedy. I wouldn't be able to handle the fucking moral minefield it's becoming.

I am sorry this Dr. Brandt felt compelled to take his own life, whatever the reasons. But to try and put this on the UKS writers is absurd. Him suffering from depression doesn't seem to be public knowledge so how were they supposed to know any of that.

"Well, John Glover in Gremlins 2 is probably the best example of that. In the original idea he was the bad guy. He was Ted Turner and Donald Trump rolled into one. And casting this particular actor changed the entire part, because he was so likable. We ended up playing him as this big, enthusiastic kid, instead of the evil corporate guy. You don’t want to demonize people, and you don’t want to play a cliché."

Man, there hasn't been an inane culture war blow up in almost a full day now. I haven't consumed a thinkpiece in hours and withdrawal is setting in. I'm in cold sweats here... feeling the shakes coming on...

Man, there hasn't been an inane culture war blow up in almost a full day now. I haven't consumed a thinkpiece in hours and withdrawal is setting in. I'm in cold sweats here... feeling the shakes coming on...

Man, there hasn't been an inane culture war blow up in almost a full day now. I haven't consumed a thinkpiece in hours and withdrawal is setting in. I'm in cold sweats here... feeling the shakes coming on...

Man, there hasn't been an inane culture war blow up in almost a full day now. I haven't consumed a thinkpiece in hours and withdrawal is setting in. I'm in cold sweats here... feeling the shakes coming on...

I love the recent articles of his where he is aghast, distraught and fretful that such things like the Trevor Noah outrage and this movie screening cancellation are able to occur. It's so painfully obvious that these are the politics and social engineering the left(He Who Shall Not Be Named's preferred place on the spectrum) have pushed for the past forty years writ large. Chickens coming home to roost and all that. There was a recent article from an northeastern newspaper I read where a college professor was detailing exactly the behavior the left, of which he is a part, wanted to bring to the light and make changes of. He basically said that the students have gone to eleven with it and are turning in liberal professors for the things they began to bring about social awareness and change for years ago.

His recent Tweet about Rand Paul and the end of America is so through the looking glass I almost had no words.

I love the recent articles of his where he is aghast, distraught and fretful that such things like the Trevor Noah outrage and this movie screening cancellation are able to occur. It's so painfully obvious that these are the politics and social engineering the left(He Who Shall Not Be Named's preferred place on the spectrum) have pushed for the past forty years writ large. Chickens coming home to roost and all that. There was a recent article from an northeastern newspaper I read where a college professor was detailing exactly the behavior the left, of which he is a part, wanted to bring to the light and make changes of. He basically said that the students have gone to eleven with it and are turning in liberal professors for the things they began to bring about social awareness and change for years ago.

You'd think it would be obvious that any form of extremism could lead to bad things. I don't know, it's a really difficult subject to talk about, you feel like you need any argument you make has to be prefaced by FilmcritHulk-length provisos. I tried to bring the subject up on Facebook and wasn't even engaged in any meaningful way, just shut down with implications that I'm a privileged white dude who's whining about political correctness.

You'd think it would be obvious that any form of extremism could lead to bad things.

For sure. However our mass market media driven culture amplifies everything and if you keep the serfs warring with each other over bread and circuses then you can steal from both sides without anyone being the wiser. Yet, everyone will always think it's the other sides fault.

Quote:

I don't know, it's a really difficult subject to talk about, you feel like you need any argument you make has to be prefaced by FilmcritHulk-length provisos. I tried to bring the subject up on Facebook and wasn't even engaged in any meaningful way, just shut down with implications that I'm a privileged white dude who's whining about political correctness.

No shit. You have to prove Supreme Court level "standing" in order to engage in debate. Stifling ideas and creating an atmosphere of fearfulness to speak up and out is winning. It's the use of lightning words that shut down debate and give false "wins" to one side or the other. Language has been twisted so horribly in a rush for political correctness however that blame can't lie at "any form of extremism" that is solely at the feet of leftists.

As irritating as thinkpiece culture can be, it's really just a bunch of people trying to establish an identity for a movement and a way to move forward. Liberals still leave all of the really heavy equality raping, infrastructure damaging, boot-to-neck stuff for Conservatives.

. I tried to bring the subject up on Facebook and wasn't even engaged in any meaningful way, just shut down with implications that I'm a privileged white dude who's whining about political correctness.

HHAHAHA I saw that!

I think you were fine. You simply had the bad timing of posting it at the same time as Lauren for Sean to screencap the disparate reactions.

Speaking of Facebook, western society, and engaging in meaningful ways...

A friend of mine - someone I have not spoken to face to face in 30 years and only recently connected with via FB - posted this several days ago:

I debated responding, and (probably unwisely) went ahead and posted a comment. I responded thusly:

Quote:

The President is a Christian. The United States is populated, by a VAST majority, by Christians. I grew up Episcopalian, and spent more than a decade in evangelical circles from college until my mid-30s. I find his remarks entirely on target and far more diplomatic than I'd ever put it.

Considering the number of drone strikes under his presidency, the killing of bin Laden, etc., I'd say there is ample proof that Mr. Obama is aware of and concerned about radicals across the globe.

Also, for anyone willing to challenge their assumptions, I'd recommend this article:

Yeah, hardly. I know what I think of women having control over their own bodies, same sex couples buying wedding cakes, college kids carrying fucking guns on campus, and poor people eating or not eating lobster, but I'm not part of the party drafting bills to make sure those things go the way I want them to.

I live in Texas, man, the only reason this state is still red is because the people who would make it blue are too busy posting selfies on Instagram, but the red mind and belief system is still pretty observable.

I recently read a blog post by a woman who identified herself as an SJW. The post was about the word "butthurt" and how she decided, after thinking about it, and "researching it", that the word was homophobic (apparently, this is an actual discussion that's happened more than once).

That immediately struck me as absurd. I think she's a clown. However, it lacks the pure malignance of say, putting up a sign in your restaurant refusing to serve anyone who doesn't speak English. Some things are stupid, like really fucking stupid, but there are other things that are genuinely to disturbing and destructive.

I don't have a degree in political science, but I've got a brain and two eyes in my skull that uploads information for said brain to decode, and I've by and large figured where my moral compass falls.

Originally Posted by Evi
it's a really difficult subject to talk about, you feel like you need any argument you make has to be prefaced by FilmcritHulk-length provisos. I tried to bring the subject up on Facebook and wasn't even engaged in any meaningful way, just shut down with implications that I'm a privileged white dude who's whining about political correctness.

This trend is, I think, the most insidious aspect of this whole thing.

The fact that even strident leftists like Devin are starting to rail against this stuff now proves a point I don't think has fully sunk in for a lot of people, which is that this isn't so much a battle between left and right but between (in Political Compass* terms) the upper left and the lower left. I mean think about it - card carrying conservatives aren't going to give a shit about whether they live up to the standards of the internet's self appointed Gatekeepers Of The Left, so these snipey witchhunts are just liberalism cannibalising itself.

I was thinking the other day how my late teens and early twenties neatly coincided with the golden years of Bush and the neocons. Back then the left felt like this united front of common sense and decency in a crazy world. That I'd be aligned with them was such a no-brainer there was never any question of it. I wonder what I'd be thinking if I was that age now, because this zero-tolerance our-way-or-the-highway climate would've left me wondering where the hell I was supposed to fit in.

It might sound melodramatic but this new strain of leftism, whatever name you want to put on it, feels closer in spirit to the far right than what I'd consider liberal values - of which I thought being fair-minded, introspective and open to different ways of thinking were fairly central. The core philosophy might be based on postmodernism and privilege theory instead of the Bible or Kissinger or whatever, but the mentality of having all the answers and demanding the world bend to fit your dogmatic worldview all feels pretty familiar.

*note: the actual test on that site is pretty useless. The compass concept itself is sound, though.

That's exactly what it is. Respond to your lack of empowerment by forming a sufficiently insulated coffee klatch, and all of a sudden in you're in the (local) majority and free to abuse people yourself, if that's how you're wired. It has less to do with party affiliation than it has to do with the primate brain.

This is really just the newest form of the left getting in its own way by disagreeing with each other. And that's pretty natural, because the left is at least superficially interested in the 'nuances of everything' which gets a lot more tangled than the general simplification that the current right indulges in so 'expertly.'

But people being people, even something as good as nuance can be weaponized very easily.

That doesn't absolve the right in this, of course. Because they're all too eager to exploit the weaponization of nuance for their own ends.

It all sounds nefarious, but it's just people doing what they think makes them feel good and protect their worldview. And that's what makes it RIGHT!!!